In Austin’s Most Conservative District, Will the City’s Sole Republican Council Member Keep Her Seat?

Austin’s northwesternmost City Council district has enough conservative voters to elect a Republican, and in past elections the comparatively suburban district has swung between conservative and liberal candidates. In November, they will choose between an incumbent Republican and a Democrat challenger, in a high-turnout presidential election, in a district that was redrawn in significant ways during the city’s 2021 redistricting process.

A few factors are likely to have outsize impact on what will be one of the most competitive Council races of the 2024 election cycle – the quest for District 6.

First, while Council races are technically nonpartisan, meaning the candidates do not formally associate with any political party, in reality candidates very much belong to political parties. All but one Council member currently on the dais is a Democrat, both by formal affiliation with the Democratic party and through the policy positions they support as elected officials.

The lone exception is D6’s Mackenzie Kelly, a Republican with deep ties to the local and state GOP. She defeated Democrat Jimmy Flannigan in 2020 for the D6 seat. Kelly’s opponent, Krista Laine, has never held elected office, but has a Democratic voting history. Through Access RRISD, an organization she co-founded, Laine also campaigned in support of a slate of Democratic-leaning school board candidates in Round Rock (also nonpartisan races that are better understood through a partisan lens). Those RRISD Dems ultimately defeated a slate of extreme Republican candidates funded by right-wing groups across the nation. (Laine has also been endorsed by Chito Vela, Paige Ellis, and Zo Qadri – three of Austin’s most progressive CMs.)

Laine’s being a Democrat might not be helpful every election, but in this case there is some reason to believe D6 will lean left. In runoff elections, Republican voters tend to turn out more than Democratic voters. But Kelly and Laine are the only two candidates on the ballot, so there will be no December runoff (in 2020, Kelly finished second in November but narrowly won the December runoff against Flannigan).

D6 contains more Republican voters than any other Council district, but it is still a majority Democratic district. A voter analysis conducted by local campaign operative Jim Wick (who is working for Laine) found that in the 2022 gubernatorial election, Beto O’Rourke received 68% of votes cast from precincts located in D6. And this is not just any November election – it’s a November presidential election that has seen Democratic enthusiasm surge in the wake of Kamala Harris’ campaign.

The district’s new lines also make it more Democratic. When D6 was redrawn in 2021 it lost vital Republican strongholds in River Place, Steiner Ranch, and other neighborhoods south of 2222. These are areas filled with highly energized voters (i.e., they almost always vote) who have historically supported Republicans. But they are no longer D6 voters (they belong to D10 now). Moreover, the district did not add, in any substantive way, Republican precincts that would balance out the loss of those three areas.

David Butts, a local Democratic operative who has helped elect many people to Austin’s City Council but is now supporting Kelly, had simple advice for Kelly: “If she wants to be reelected, she should leave the Republican Party.”

Slim chance that happens. Kelly said she tries not to think of herself as a Republican because Council offices are nonpartisan (though, she jokes that people often refer to her as the “mayor of Austin Republicans”). “It’s difficult being a CM facing reelection in a presidential year,” Kelly said, referencing the intense politicization of work she views as apolitical (public safety, traffic improvement, housing, etc.). On this point, Laine agrees. “When I’m knocking on doors, people mostly just want to talk about city services,” Laine told us.

Improving how the city’s three public safety departments (police, fire, and EMS) respond to 911 calls is a common concern among D6 residents. Because it is the city’s most suburban district, response times can be slower than in other parts of the city. Improving staffing at each agency has been a priority for Kelly (in the most recent budget, she voted for an amendment that would pay for another cadet class at Austin’s Fire Academy) and, of course, she has been an ardent supporter of increasing the number of officers at the Austin Police Department going back to her 2020 campaign. (Kelly has been endorsed by all three public safety unions.)

Laine said staffing is important, but she would also prioritize improving coordination and communication between the different jurisdictions that exist in D6 – Travis and Williamson counties, the cities of Austin and Round Rock, the Austin and Round Rock school districts. If APD officers are unavailable for a call in Canyon Vista, for example, maybe the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office could take it. “We have not seen enough improvement in 911 response time,” Laine said. “I feel like those relationships are not being as coordinated as well as they could be.”

Housing will continue to be an issue. Kelly was one of two CMs to vote against Council’s Home Options for Mobility and Equity (HOME) initiative, a broadly popular set of reforms intended to boost production of smaller-sized homes that are less expensive to build and, in theory, less expensive to sell or lease. “I hear time and time again that people moved to D6 to have their big lots,” Kelly said. “Density makes sense in other parts of the city, but what HOME was offering is not something most of the constituents I was talking to wanted to see.” Butts said that appealing to voters who are skeptical of Council’s action on housing is the incumbent’s surest path to reelection.

For Laine, HOME was a welcome advancement on an issue she’s observed professionally (she worked for a decade appraising commercial real estate). “We need to create a staircase of housing options that doesn’t have any chasms in the middle of it,” Laine said. One way she hopes to do that in a post-HOME world is to focus on steps in the staircase that the city has control over and that are not overly politicized – like speeding up the rate at which building permits are processed.

Broadly speaking, Kelly’s governing philosophy revolves around issues and authorities that she perceives to be within the city’s purview. “The charter and municipal code are like my bible,” she told us. “I focus on what the city has control over.” To that end, she has voted against items that most of Austin, if not most of her constituents, would support. Last week, she voted against resolutions condemning Senate Bill 4, the state immigration law passed last year that the ACLU of Texas has called a “deportation scheme,” and also rejected another resolution declaring the right to an abortion a human right.

In May, Kelly voted against a resolution seeking to protect transgender Austinites. She said part of her opposition to these types of items is that they feel like “virtue signaling” because they promise local action on issues that are primarily decided at the state and federal level. She has also said that supporting such measures is not financially prudent, because they could expose the city to lawsuits (the city was sued last week over a program providing financial assistance to people seeking out-of-state abortions).

Neither of these justifications sit well with Laine, however. “I personally know too many D6 families who have left Texas because they don’t feel their children are safe to question their gender identity here,” Laine told us. “It is absolutely the responsibility of the City Council to protect the civil rights of people living and visiting here.”